Some Chinese men (and women) dislike the fact that some foreign men sleep with Chinese women. This is not a new idea, of course, but in light of the recent chinaSMACK post, let’s take a look at some of the reasons why, and attempt to assess their validity. The following are all paraphrases of ideas found in the chinaSMACK post.

Many foreigners have come to China because they have failed in their own countries. This is, of course, very difficult to evaluate, but speaking anecdotally, I haven’t found this to be particularly true. Of the foreigners I’ve met and worked with in China, most came for adventure and new experiences, or to study (or both). Many of them are well-accomplished and left much higher paying jobs at home for the chance to experience something new. I don’t know anyone at all who it seemed clear was only working in China because he/she struck out at home, but of course, that’s just anecdotal. How about the foreigners you know?

Foreigners come to China looking for Chinese women. Again, I don’t know anyone who professed, even behind closed doors, to have come to China for this reason alone, although I have certainly heard my fare share “yellow fever” crap from lecherous foreigners. Still, there are so many more foreign men than women in China (at least in Harbin) that perhaps there’s some truth to this one. Foreigners, why did you come to China? Was it all about the ladies?

All foreigners do in their spare time is grumble about China. Nonsense, what we do in our spare time is drink, n’est-ce pas?

Chinese woman/foreign man marriages will fail because divorce rates in the West are high. Certainly, many Western countries have high divorce rates, but China isn’t far behind. The nationwide average has been climbing rapidly for the past thirty years, and the speed of increase in the divorce rate has recently outpaced the rate of increase in the number of new marriages. Moreover, divorce rates in many of China’s most developed cities are already over 50%, which puts China on more or less even footing with the West. This one seems bogus to me.

Foreign men cannot love Chinese women because they don’t respect them. Not sure I buy this one, either. Certainly, there are foreigners who don’t respect women, but most of the men I know married to Chinese women are pretty respectful, if not downright obedient towards their wives. Of course, this is purely anecdotal.

Foreign men are better at sex. Frankly, this is probably true. I’d venture to guess that the average foreigner has significantly more sexual experience than the average Chinese male of the same age.

Though at times it’s over-generalizing and xenophobic, the chinaSMACK article’s main point is that Chinese people should respect themselves and not treat foreigners specially. If “not treating foreigners specially” means not trying to give us the 3000% price hike whenever we’re trying to buy something, I think many foreigners could get behind that.

Foreigner Poll Time!

My assessment above is pretty unscientific, so let’s do some polling. This, of course, is also deeply unscientific, but we still might learn something if people respect the rules:

Please only answer if you are a foreigner who has lived in China at some point or who currently lives in China.

Please only answer the questions that apply to you. For example, if you are a heterosexual male, you should not be answering questions about how attracted you are to Chinese men.

Do some self-reflection and answer honestly.

Since this information is pretty personal, now is a good time to remind everyone that these polls are anonymous. Hooray!

1,Wow, An interesting survey. Hope more and more people would participate in this survey with honesty. Since I am a Chinese, I will leave it alone. But I will continue to pay attention over this survey.

2, I tend to talk with foreigners whenever i met them. because I want to know more about what your foreigners think of China and what your foreigners know about China. And It is a good choice to practice my spoken English.

3, To be honest, sometimes i may feel pissed when I saw a young woman hanging with an old foreigners hand in hand. But I know I have no right to behave like at all. There are also a lot of young girls who would rather be some Chinese rich man’s love, too. It is a materialism world. People have the freedom to do what benefit them best as long as they don’t invade others interest. But this kind of phenomenon is much more common than other countries. And I can’t blame them. China is a society where all dreams of the young are deprived by its political system. It is a land of slavery and suppression.

4, It is a progress that people worship money than someone Like Mao, which killed millions of citizens. And the consciousness about the freedom, human right and democracy. And your foreigners contributes a lot to arise this realization. Thanks very much.

Nooo! You’ve taken the bait! This is Grade A chinaSMACK trolling! LoL!

On the bullet points:

1. This is purely another case of a few bad apples sticking out. The vast majority of people who actually stop and really think about it would acknowledge it as such, that there are some who leave disproportionate impressions on people.

2. Those who actually come to China with a conscious motive of getting ass usually are coming only for a short-term, like a vacation, even sex-tourism. They’re the extreme minority. The vast majority don’t consciously realize their “marketability” until they get here and actually experience disproportionate attention from what they experienced back home. What I think the original writer is ranting about is not so much that she thinks most people come here explicitly to get laid, but how many begin acting after they realize how easily they can play the girls here.

3. No, foreigners grumble about China more than they drink. There are some people who don’t drink. Those who drink a lot tend to grumble WHILE drinking. I don’t think this Chinese impression of foreigners in general is unfounded. It isn’t absolutely true, of course, but it also isn’t necessary to take literal the original writer’s exaggeration. Anyone reading the entire post knows that she is mentally capable of recognizing exceptions to her generalizations. Insisting on taking her comments literally is more to dodge the real issues she’s complaining about. We all do that sometimes. It’s a variant of the straw man argument.

4. I don’t think she’s arguing that such marriages will definitely fail. She’s just reminding Chinese girls of a statistical fact and for them to not be lulled into a false sense of security, for them to be aware of the possibility, of the different cultural expectations towards marriage and divorce. It’s a reasonable caution, I think. Again, I don’t think her point is difficult to understand even if she’s using some fiery language here.

5. Her point here isn’t that foreign men can’t love Chinese women because they don’t respect them. Her point is that there needs to be respect for there to be true love, which I think most people agree with. She’s cautioning Chinese women to be careful of foreign men who see them as mere objects, conquests, or stupid Chinks who dig foreign cock. She’s telling the Chinese girls to check themselves and their man, to be aware of how the social trend of Chinese women throwing themselves at foreign men has the nasty by-product of foreign men developing some unhealthily arrogant egos. Remember, her overall mission is to fight against what she perceives as unfair and unbalanced racial dynamics. She feels Chinese girls throwing themselves at foreign men and Chinese guys having much less success with foreign women is contributing to unhealthy racial views in both sets. One side develops an inferiority complex while the other a superiority complex. She reiterates this throughout her post. While somewhat naive, she feels that if she can disabuse Chinese girls of some of their naivety about all things foreign on one hand, and push for increasing the reverse marketability of Chinese guys with foreign women, she can correct the racial imbalance.

6. I’d agree with this as well and is pretty much a function of how sexually liberated a society is. But I think the original writer totally recognizes this and has no problem with it. At one section of her post, she explicitly says “if you’re after X, I’m not stopping you” or something like that. Her point is really to dispel the misconceptions of foreigners she thinks some Chinese girls have that lead them to blindly throw themselves at foreigners. She’s fine with the girls who know what they’re doing and what they’re after. We look at the title and think she’s really on about stopping all girls from sleeping with foreigners but if you read her post, it isn’t hard to see that she’s really just angry about how unbalanced the racial situation is, angry with cocky foreigners, angry with self-loathing Chinese.

I have one acquaintance that would fit the English teacher stereotype perfectly and he makes no effort to conceal that girls are the primary reason he is in China at the moment and will return at a later date to “study”. Apart from this one bad apple the other foreigners I have met in China are just regular guys.

He is extremely vocal in his thoughts and so undoubtedly he would leave a long lasting negative impression of foreigners. You can take a look at the one British and one Australian guy currently on trial for their involvement in the recent red shirt protests in Thailand.

These unattractive traits also seem to be present in a vocal minority/majority/trolls (I don’t know) on expat based sites which has actually made me wary of new foreigners I meet as I try to establish what kind of person they are.

The bad apple argument goes both ways, it is a tiny minority of Chinese girls giving a false impression of the majority. Unfortunately, in my opinion, this affects everyone in a relationship with a Chinese girl although nowhere near to the same extent to the negative connotations one might receive by having a Thai wife in the west.

No, obviously we have no control over who we’re sexually attracted to, so condemning you for being mostly attracted to asians would be just as stupid and ignorant as condemning someone for being gay (see what I did there! politics!)

At any rate, no, I’m just curious because a foreign woman once accused me of not understanding her frustration with foreign men because I “only date Chinese girls.” I pointed out that that wasn’t even remotely true, but that for men looking to date women in China, their options are generally about 99% Chinese, so of course many men will end up with Chinese girls. I don’t know about Beijing or Shanghai, but at the time I was living in Harbin, where there are very few foreigners and even fewer women (if you don’t count the Russian hookers). So if a guy is dating a Chinese girl, it isn’t necessarily “yellow fever”.

Custer. Control group: a small sample survey designed to see is you haven’t included ambiguous questions, focussed on the correct recipient group, excluded bias, etc. Rejig your questionairre before you tackle your larger survey group.

Statistical information collection is a fairly complex business these days.

I know what a control group is, but this is an internet poll, not a scientific study. There’s not much point in taking it that seriously, as there’s no real way to ensure someone hasn’t hacked the system and voted hundreds of times, lots of Chinese people or foreigners who haven’t been to China voted, etc.

I didn’t find Chinese woman more attractive than other ethnicities until after I had been here for awhile. I caught yellow fever bad. With that said, my one, and only, Chinese girlfriend later became my wife who I’ve been with four years now.

There are plenty of older people who strike out back home to come to China to teach English. The market is big, the pay to cost-of-living ratio is much better, and the amount of “work” done is minimal. Note that I myself am an English teacher (arrived when I was 23, now 27).

However, on the whole, of the 100 or so new teachers I meet each year, most are young, adventurous 20-somethings looking for a taste of China before starting something “life-long” back home.

Lastly, the wonderful, cultured, fantastic-Chinese-speaking foreigners who are not lechers, but actually quality human beings, don’t go out in public much. They hang out with Chinese people wherever Chinese people go, they don’t get drunk and belligerent or make asses of themselves (usually). You rarely see stories of DaShan-like foreigners because those stories don’t provide sensationalistic news. As a result, these ridiculous, but, sadly, sometimes true, stereotypes prevail.

Good stuff. Thinking back on all the foreign creeps/losers that I’ve met in my time in China (only a small portion of those I’ve met, btw), most of them weren’t in Beijing/Shanghai. For whatever reason, I think the creep factor goes up as you head into the hinterland. This goes for most foreigners coming to China with ulterior motives as well (sex predators, missionaries, tax evaders, etc.) It would be interesting to add a question about where poll responders live and see if that could be tied into some of the results.

hmm.. not sure whether to burn down everything I have worked on and leave this country, or just scream JIAYOU to motivate myself to once again look past ignorance…. but to make myself feel a bit better about myself here are my comments about the “debate”

It should be said that this debate is neither new to China, nor one that necessarily is owned by China. We have plenty of bigots and racists around the world. PEople who have started wars because their ignorance was so widely accepted as truth, and the total lack of critical thinking on the subject by the original poster (and commentators) should not be surprising.

They are having an emotional response, that is poorly thought through, and really should be ignored altogether. if not struck down by a moderator.

why do I say that?

Simple. If it is to be assumed that foreigners cannot make it in their country is a primary reason for their being here, then what about the Chinese who have populated Western schools, built China towns in most major cities, and continue to seek out foreign passports for their children. Did they fail? No, they see an opportunity (economic, personal, or other) that they cannot get in their hometowns (maybe it was their hometowns that failed?), and seek it somewhere else.

.. and I find it interesting that the poster doesn’t consider the need for foreigners here as a failure on some level (not that I think it is, but if we are going to spew crappy logic, it seems that “China could do it without us?” is an appropriate followup question).

Second, a foreigner who moves here to learn Chinese, and finds a girlfriend/ boyfriend, is only MORE LIKELY to find a Chinese girlfriend or boyfriend as they SEEK OUT CULTURE, HISTORY, and some measure of UNDERSTANDING of the Chinese. That is not to say they are more likely to succeed, but it certainly increases the statistical probability that they find themselves in a mixed relationship.

(Note: I generally find the 65 year old white guy with a 19 year old Chinese girl equally repulsive… but, I am also smart enough to recognize that this is the minority of relationships… and is a fraction of the old guy/ young girl relationships that exist within the Chinese society)

With regard to how much a foreigner does or does not respect a Chinese woman (or man), I suggest a simple test… watch what happens when someone falls down the escalator or gets hit by a bus, and SEE WHO ACTS. I have seen, and heard enough about events where a persons life was near the end, could have prevented, but not a single member of the crowd would do anything besides arguing over how much distance the victim got or gawk at the foreigner performing CPR for 30 minutes.

.. and closer to the point of respecting women… have you ever seen a White guy beat a Chinese woman in public? How many have seen a Chinese men smack, pull hair, and otherwise disrespect “their” women in public?

With regard to the question of divorce, this is perhaps a point that I would agree on, but CC makes a great point about divorce rates as well. Were I fall on the side of the original post is that when I first landed in China, about 60% of the people I knew who married “local”, fell apart in 1-2 years. A large part of this was cultural, and the fact that the people who were married were typically men in their 40+ and married to women in their 20s-30s. They were less likely to be learning about the language, and more likely to be on an expat assignment.. and things didn’t work out. As I have been here longer, what I have noticed is that people my age (35) that married “local” tend to marry closer in age, and the relationships work far better. In fact, I only know of a single case that it fell apart, and that was because SHE cheated on him.

All this being said.. there are so many generalities built into both sides of the argument, and I think your poll will show where some of the generalities do/ do not hold up. Of course there is truth to both sides, but what is missing is context. It isn’t all old white guys banging away at young girls, and some of the foreigners here care a great deal about China, its people, and what they have built here.

I guess I fall into this “repulsive” relationship category…older (50s) white guy with younger (20s) Chinese girl. Beyond this initial confession and prior to stumbling into my current situation, allow me to also admit that I, too, always used to assess this type of pairing within a range from odd to repulsive.

Think back on your own encounters with these couples. Maybe you’ve actually known one or two, but chances are they were simply passersby. And, as we all do each and every day with people we know and people we don’t know, we make snap judgments based solely on appearance. For myself, it’s rarely the young woman who bears my scrutiny. It’s the man.

Is he professional looking? Well-dressed and presentably groomed? In relatively good shape? If so, I always thought, “Hmm, look at the rather odd couple.” On the other hand, I’ve seen my share of eye-popping, “Oh my god, look at what that poor girl is (sometimes literally) dragging home!” (I’ve had this latter reaction in China of course, but it seems more prevalent in the Philippines and Thailand when I’ve been on holiday.)

But I never…ever, ever, ever…thought I would be one of those odd (or repulsive) couples. Cultural and economic disparities aside, I just never believed that two people with such an age difference could form a truly viable relationship.

When I first came here, I was focused mostly on soaking up the culture and exploring the country. However, that’s not to say that I didn’t keep my eyes open when it came to the fairer sex. I did “date” a little that first year, but found it rather discombobulating when I learned that, subsequent to the third date, one was expected to immediately head for the marriage registration office.

For those of you in the know, I was obviously dating “traditional” Chinese women. In particular, women 10-15 years younger than me, which seems to be the more commonly accepted, perhaps even preferred, age difference here than what is considered “normal” where I come from. I eventually settled into a relationship with a woman 14 years my junior. This relationship lasted two years, during which time I learned that there are some aspects of a “traditional” Chinese woman that I adore. Yet, there are some that don’t suit me very well.

We parted company fairly congenially, but I found myself reassessing the big picture when it came to long term relationships with a Chinese woman. And then, I mentioned this earlier, I quite literally stumbled into “her.” A girl who is 34 years younger than me.

I spent the first three months in total disbelief. Not only was I not looking for this, I didn’t even believe in it! And it was six months before we both felt sure enough of our feelings to even become intimate. We’ve been together nearing four years now. I have never been happier, never felt such depth and breadth of love in my entire life. And I know, by the mirror of her eyes, it is the same for her.

We walk hand in hand in the street. We talk, we laugh and smile at each other. People stare. People point at us. We’ve been called names. We’ve even been accosted, by both men and women, foreigners and locals.

Call us crazy. Label us the odd couple. Or react with revulsion. Sui bian ni! But you don’t know us, nor do you have the right to judge us. Yes, I used to do the same, but I strive now to accord people some simple respect for making their own choices.

[Full Disclosure: I came to China to fulfill my dream as a young man to experience this country’s cultural diversity, as well as to travel here and nearby. I was successful within my chosen profession. I am neither destitute nor rich. I find Asian women (Chinese women in particular) more attractive than all other races. I have lived in China seven years. I am an English teacher. I have a sweet tooth when it comes to eye candy, but I have never chased students.]

Chinese people seem so much more varied to me today than they were when I first went to China in the late 80s. Foreigners in China probably are too. The discussion topic of foreigners and Chinese ppl doesn’t seem to have lost its allure though! I was married to a Chinese guy back then. He was cute but he gambled all my wages away and slept with my classmate. Moved on from there a long time ago but not from appreciating Chinese men at a distance in all their variety. I have a lot of sympathy for the ones who take so much crap (from work, women, the system) and am glad I’m not with the ones who hand it out (at work, to women, or who are part of the system). So, 20 years later, not so different from my attitude to men anywhere…

PS I made a conscious decision to quit sleeping with mainland Chinese back in 1993 because I thought it was too easy for them to imagine you as something way beyond what you actually were, or to fail to value you highly enough and not behave well. This was probably cultural, but it made it hard to have an equal and honest relationship. (Maybe it’s much less so now, but I haven’t been there in a while.) Since then, I had one relationship outside China with a guy from dongbei who had already been overseas for a long time. That was very interesting and much more equal. Couldn’t continue, but greatly enjoyed.

The garbage that I hear about ‘all foreigners are…’ on a regular basis is somewhere between ignorance and flat out racism. In the same way that MEN ARE MEN, WHATEVER THE NATIONALITY, the same ‘all foreigners are…’ ignorance->racism exists in every country, to different extents.

In a country of 700 million Chinese women and probably only about 50,000 non-Chinese women (which includes lots of Japanese, Korean, Filipino, and other non-Chinese Asian nationalities), why is it surprising to many people that western guys here end up with Chinese girlfriends?

Wow… this topic has taken wings again – somebody in the CCP rattling the “don’t let P.R. Chinese women emigrate out of P.R. China” chain again? Find it funny that the issue of P.R. Chinese men bringing in foreign brides to P.R. China is not getting as much traction. Then again – if all the brides are from Korea, Vietnam, and elsewhere in the Asian Rim – then there is no issues. Once the brides start coming from the places like the ‘Stans, Africa, and South America… {smile} we will see.

@ xian: what do you mean “isn’t real”? I agree there’s a good chance it wasn’t written by the woman it says is the author, but who cares. It was written by someone, and it’s been being passed around and reposted on the Chinese internet for years now, so it obviously has some resonance with the average 网民. I think it’s worth looking at…who cares who wrote it?

Why does this have to be all about you arrogant white pricks? Half the foreigners in Beijing are South Korean citizens, we fuck Chinese chicks, I certainly did on numerous occasions, why is all this shit so Eurocentric?

As my ten-year anniversary is coming up in a few months, I would like to attest to the fact that the long-lasting Sino-foreign marriage is indeed possible.

A word of advice to prospective foreign husbands out there — once you stop being argumentative, the beatings will cease. I haven’t had a broken bone in years now, and I’m enjoying life to the fullest. :)

BTW, every time I see an old foreign dude with a young Chinese girl, I get pissed off. It’s just wrong for all kinds of reasons. I understand that men have no innate understanding of sexual restraint, but we should give it a try now and again for the betterment of humanity.

洋白老 paired with young Asian dudes is a pervasive scene in the overseas gay Asian sub-community and a few papers have been written to explore the underlying social/economical/cultural/psychological rationales.

You have to understand that sex with a handsome Occidental man is the fantasy of the Oriental woman. In China I encountered many respectable women who wanted sex with me simply for the novelty of the experience. Once you enter their trusted inner social circle, you can then get introduced to their girlfriends who also seek similar fulfillment with no long term commitments. It is indeed a wonderful world to live in.
There were even occasions when a female acquaintance would hint that she was merely interested in seeing what a Caucasian penis looked like, and naturally I accommodated this curiosity as well.

Most Chinese men have horrible hygiene, fashion sense, manners, and habits. It’s like watching a monkey. Why would anyone want that? It’s not anyone’s fault but their own, so if they’re pissed off that foreign girls don’t like them maybe they should take a look in the mirror and discover why.

In China now for some MA level research, but I came twice before as a teacher.
In my experiance english teachers come in all shapes and sizes, but many who make a bit of a career out of it, or at least a solid and visible group of teachers are loosers with a big capital L. I dont know if they failed back at home, or are just in the business of not appling theriself when there is no need.

On the topic of sex, I had a few drinks with a couple of Chinese buddies and they brought up the topic of oral sex. I proffered that giving was just as good as getting, this resulted in a dumbfounded look from the lot of them. Sigh China needs a david dacovny or something.

Hey king Tubby
Still with the personal attacks?
Yea not all of us can go ffor a traditional education. Use our experiance to challange our book learning then use the daily experiances of our travels to different cultures to begin a piece of research.
but then again some of us can.

Bai Ren, UBC might be cool and all, but how good is Thunderbird football? When they can make it through the gauntlet of death that is the SEC football league, then I’ll consider your claims to their greatness to be true.

pent many a class telling us argue is with an ‘e’. argument is without an ‘e’. and can you believe it in this location where more than half of highschool grads are esl this class was mostly english first language? my ancestors must be rolling in their graves.
now I hope my short form, god forbid txt language, or twitter (140 character can say anything) take over the world. need I say that here I agree with you and like the USA experiment at making a new dictionary in the 1930s I hope this type of language never becomes formalized, but that I accept it and make use of it in the public forum.
as for spelt… or was it shaln’t? is this kind of spelling a little too old fashioned for your tastes?

Language changes my friend, some spelling errors are typos, some are legitimate spelling mistakes. Others are re-envisionments. ie shaln’t became shouldn’t over time. but than again that all happened before contractions which are not acceptible in formal essay formate anyways… right?

King Tubby, my friend, what never did I hit to make you upset? is it but the presentation of my ideas? That my experiances of Chinese hospitals differes from your prenentation of them?

If it is the first, I ask you to not show your provincial-ness. I understand in the less developed colonies of the common wealth language is different. The same goes for Quebes versus France., where in France a walkman during the 90s was called a walkman whereas in Quebec it was called l’ballidair (or something of the sort). or hot dog was called hot dog in France but was transliterated in Quebec.

My old friend, do not purge the ranks when you feel old and comfortable in your position. Are you such an ‘old boot’? that you think yourself so high? be more like the 4th emporer of rome and encourage the ranks!

again my provincial friend… shaln’t was not correct, shan’t is better, no?
“oh dear what can the matter be? 7 old ladies locked in the lavatory.
They were there from sunday to saturday”
this is the lyeric of your commentaries

“China, did you know about this? You’ve given laowai too much, too much, so much that laowai have come to look down upon you. So much that even foreigners themselves find it odd, calling [those ugly foreigners] white trash. I want to take this opportunity to warn those laowai to not feel too proud. All you have gotten are the bodies of Chinese women, bodies without souls.”

“Don’t forget that the more face you give someone, the more they look down on you.”

“If you’re a movie director, don’t spend money on frivolous things. Make a movie where the Chinese girl rejects the foreign man, or where the Chinese guy conquers a foreign girl.”

About the grumbling about China thing:

I think it should be noted that in American culture, we grow up being actively encouraged to voice our thoughts, whether we like or dislike something. I’ve certainly heard plenty of people grumbling about America in my time, so I don’t know why China should be treated as a special case.

About the rest:
This strikes me as mostly xenophobic. Perhaps it’s because I happen to be a foreign man married to a Chinese woman. But just as Custer noted before in a blog post, why is it that a Chinese man dominating a foreign woman is glorious and a western man having relations with a Chinese woman is equivalent to Faust shaking hands with the devil?

If she sees imbalances in the racial dynamic, that’s fine. But it’s not my fault nor my wife’s fault. I didn’t come here with the mission to fuck as many Chinese girls as I could, and I didn’t come cause I couldn’t find a job. Yet I’m still included in the group described in her post.

She goes on and on about research and scientific findings. What exactly is scientific about saying, “This one time, I saw this American guy groping a Chinese girl on a bus”?

Gah, fuck her and xenophobia. Maybe someone should clue her in on the fact that young Chinese women also sleep with old Chinese men who have money; that it’s not restricted to interracial relations. It’s just that us foreigners call them our girlfriends or wives and Chinese men call them their second, third, or fourth wives. Just as a commenter on Chinasmack said, we live in a materialistic world. These phenomena that she observes and wants to defend the sacred Middle Kingdom against — lest it be sullied — they’re not unique to China and her shortsightedness amounts to nothing more than chauvinism.

/rant

Kai, that was only partially a response to you. The rest is just me voicing my general frustration.

“If you’re mar­ried to a for­eigner, boldly stand up and tell your sis­ters that your life out­side of China is lonely, bor­ing, hard, and that you miss home.”

Reading her post in context, I think she’s referring to those who are actually unhappy abroad. She wants them to offer their testimonies to temper the enthusiasm of some naive Chinese girls who think life will be perfect with a foreigner. Look at the “China Does Not Have Any Men Suitable For Me” post.

Again, reading in context, she’s referring to the foreign men she feels as having become drunk with arrogance and have look down upon Chinese girls for being so easy. She leads into the whole no respect no true love dynamic.

“China, did you know about this? You’ve given laowai too much, too much, so much that laowai have come to look down upon you. So much that even for­eign­ers them­selves find it odd, call­ing [those ugly for­eign­ers] white trash. I want to take this oppor­tu­nity to warn those laowai to not feel too proud. All you have got­ten are the bod­ies of Chi­nese women, bod­ies with­out souls.”

Don’t know what is so offensive about this.

“Don’t for­get that the more face you give some­one, the more they look down on you.”

This can be true. If you treat some people like God, it goes to their heads.

“If you’re a movie direc­tor, don’t spend money on friv­o­lous things. Make a movie where the Chi­nese girl rejects the for­eign man, or where the Chi­nese guy con­quers a for­eign girl.”

Right, the idea is to change pop culture and then social norms.

I think it should be noted that in Amer­i­can cul­ture, we grow up being actively encour­aged to voice our thoughts, whether we like or dis­like some­thing. I’ve cer­tainly heard plenty of peo­ple grum­bling about Amer­ica in my time, so I don’t know why China should be treated as a spe­cial case.

I think she’s just gotten sick of it. “Hosts” tend to get sick of “guests” grumbling about them and their home after awhile. I don’t see this being unique to China whatsoever.

This strikes me as mostly xeno­pho­bic. Per­haps it’s because I hap­pen to be a for­eign man mar­ried to a Chi­nese woman. But just as Custer noted before in a blog post, why is it that a Chi­nese man dom­i­nat­ing a for­eign woman is glo­ri­ous and a west­ern man hav­ing rela­tions with a Chi­nese woman is equiv­a­lent to Faust shak­ing hands with the devil?

SOME Chinese men feel that way. I don’t think that was what this writer felt. I don’t see why it is so difficult to understand that sentiment (doesn’t mean you have to subscribe to it). It is prevalent in so many interracial and intercultural dynamics. Ever seen Undercover Brother? Great movie. Recommend it.

If she sees imbal­ances in the racial dynamic, that’s fine. But it’s not my fault nor my wife’s fault. I didn’t come here with the mis­sion to fuck as many Chi­nese girls as I could, and I didn’t come cause I couldn’t find a job. Yet I’m still included in the group described in her post.

I think you’re internalizing, which I find totally understandable given her language, but I think you’re still being hasty. She lays out quite clearly what she’s upset about and even in the comments where it isn’t fully specified, the context is totally right there. If you’re not a cocky foreign guy who looks down upon the Chinese and your wife isn’t ashamed to be Chinese, then I think you two are in the clear. She generalizes, and that’s offensive, I totally identify with that, but I do think she said enough to work out the limitations of what she’s railing on about.

She goes on and on about research and sci­en­tific find­ings. What exactly is sci­en­tific about say­ing, “This one time, I saw this Amer­i­can guy grop­ing a Chi­nese girl on a bus”?

Well, you’re conflating two different parts of her post here.

Gah, fuck her and xeno­pho­bia. Maybe some­one should clue her in on the fact that young Chi­nese women also sleep with old Chi­nese men who have money; that it’s not restricted to inter­ra­cial rela­tions. It’s just that us for­eign­ers call them our girl­friends or wives and Chi­nese men call them their sec­ond, third, or fourth wives. Just as a com­menter on Chi­nas­mack said, we live in a mate­ri­al­is­tic world. These phe­nom­ena that she observes and wants to defend the sacred Mid­dle King­dom against — lest it be sul­lied — they’re not unique to China and her short­sight­ed­ness amounts to noth­ing more than chauvinism.

I really think she knows this. I’m sure she’s capable of holding two thoughts in her head at once. She’s bitching about one thing, doesn’t mean she’s not aware or not against some other thing.

Are you defending the content of that article? I mean, you can suggest whatever context you want, but in the end she still focused on foreign men even though the foreign male population of China is incredibly small, and her subject population, if it is actually in the context you’re talking about, is even smaller. If the author REALLY wanted to protect the naive girls in China, she’d have focused on the much more vast majority: Local men. So, no, I don’t believe this was an attempt to help poor naive Chinese girls at all.

It’s like a doctor spending a huge amount of time warning everyone about the cliche assumptions he has about how horribly dangerous Mesenchymal Chondrosarcoma cancers are and to do your best to avoid them when Lung Cancer is very much more common. I know that analogy is odd, but it works and it’s the best you’re going to get.

I felt she directed her ire at both foreign men and the Chinese girls that blindly worship them. I’ve read far worse to be honest. The population guilty of a phenomenon is irrelevant to the condemnation of the phenomenon.

I don’t mean context as in context of the entire population, I mean context as in “context” of her post. I’m saying you can better understand sentence A is you read sentences B, C, and D surrounding it, Jones.

Her goal was to disabuse Chinese girls from categorically worshiping foreign men. She can either show how foreign men aren’t as perfect as some Chinese girls think they are or she can show how Chinese men are better. Both are legitimate avenues of pursuit but I think the former is a lot more direct and practical than the latter. I’m sure you would’ve enjoyed her writing about how much Chinese men suck and need to improve, but that’s just your preference to not feel associated with anything negative.

How do you feel about the balance of trade between the United States and China? A lot of Americans think its unfair, that China is cheating the system. They blame and criticize China. If they really wanted to help America, they’d have focused on the much more vast majority: Americans not being as competitive as the Chinese in the industries they see an imbalance. See how meaningless this argument is? Just as there are Americans who do chide themselves, there are Chinese who chide themselves for not being more competitive. How else do you think China is so motivated to develop and modernize as quickly as it can right now? Because it knows that the humiliations it suffered in the past were as much about the aggression and exploitation of foreign powers as it was their weakness and inability to protect itself. On the whole, China is not foreign to the concept of others being responsible for their crimes as they are responsible for being the victim. No, not every individual is going to be so clear-eyed, but is that so surprising? Is it so surprising that blaming others is more popular than blaming oneself? Is it so surprising that its easier to find fault in others than oneself? Is it so surprising to criticize others instead of oneself?

I don’t think so. Just look at the vast majority of comments on chinaSMACK. But I do empathize with being annoyed with them. It just depends on what side you happen to associate yourself with.

Furthermore, remember this:

Those hollering for the extermination of ugly foreign men are all getting worked up. Maybe, some readers reading to this point have already begun condemning those Chinese women. But slow down! I want to ask something: On the issue of what created these ugly foreign men, are you and every single one of us completely blameless?

If I were to write an article on the same subject, I probably would’ve written it in a much more air-tight and defensible manner. However, I think a lot of criticisms against it are every bit as emotional and exaggerated as her criticisms in her article. I’m not so much defending the content of her article as I am criticizing the stupidity of many of the responses to her article. Look at you, in response to her criticism of the arrogance of foreigners, you respond by suggesting how inferior Chinese men are. You’re living up to her criticism. You ask her for self-reflection (which she does in part by criticizing Chinese women and acknowledging — though not enough to your satisfaction — the relative shortcomings of Chinese men) instead of blaming others, and you do the same.

Your analogy sucks. Here’s a better one: It’s like a friend warning another friend to not suck up to the pretentious superficial popular cool kids at school thinking that’ll get her into that circle. Not all friends are actually sucking up. Not all of the “cool kids” are pretentious or superficial. Yet that friend is still bothered by her friends or by other kids like her sucking up, chasing that popularity, chasing that status. For her, she doesn’t think the popular kids are really all that great, and in fact, many of them seem to be dicks. So she’s upset that some people don’t see what she sees, and she goes about trying to rectify that. Lamenting how “not cool” the other vast majority of the other kids in the school is probably not what she’s going to do. She’s probably not going to try solving this by encouraging everyone else to be “cooler”.

“Her goal was to disabuse Chinese girls from categorically worshiping foreign men.”
I see that, but why? Why the focus on foreign men and Chinese girls when it’s seriously such a small minority anyway? Why use such strong rhetoric and such a long article on the matter? If he/she truly was only trying to point out the “bad foreigners”?

“I’m sure you would’ve enjoyed her writ ing about how much Chi nese men suck and need to improve, but that’s just your preference to not feel associated with any thing negative.”
Oh, I get it. I see where this is going now. I suggest the author of that article doesn’t have the noble intentions that you somehow got out of it, and you say that you’re “sure” I would have enjoyed a different racist/ethnocentric point a view? No, Kai. I am not online, typing up novels about how girls need to realize that foreign men are nothing but lies and trouble, and nor am I assuming way too much about what I think someone was trying to say about something.

I get what you’re saying with the economics analogy. However, it’s a little bit off point because I’m not even mentioning the readers’ comments. I’m talking about the article. The article itself is mindless drivel and says nothing that I haven’t heard, time and time again, ooze out of random, xenophobic, zit-covered anal cavities in person. This type of asinine commentary happens enough for us all to have an intimate threesome with the “they’re a reject in their country and can’t get jobs” and “they just came to play Chinese girls” phrases that are broadcasted automatically as if it’s part of some mathematical equation “(a[c]+b)=x” programmed into their CPU where a=”foreigner”, b=”Chinese girl” c= “retarded assumptions” and when you solve for “x”, it always comes out as that same ignorant babbling present in that article. So yeah, I’m use to those canned remarks that are voiced over and over again.

“Look at you, in response to her criticism of the arrogance of foreigners, you respond by sug­gesting how infe rior Chinese men are.”
I did? Because I could have swore I was going by your suggestion that she was only pointing out the bad foreigners. If that is indeed the case, and she is actually just trying to help girls make better choices in men, then one must remember that a vast majority of the female population will be in relationships with Chinese men. Men everywhere are capable of being chauvinistic or “bad”, so given the huge majority of Chinese men over Foreign men in China, it would be more prudent for her to focus on the much larger faction of “bad” men, the locals. That isn’t suggesting that all Chinese men are “inferior” or any other word you want to put in my mouth. That’s suggesting that, say, if one out of every four men are “bad”, and there are I don’t know how many hundreds of millions of Chinese men in China, and I don’t know how small the cumulative foreign male population of China is over a given year, then one can reasonably deduce that the local male “threat to the naive” is much bigger of an issue than the considerably smaller foreign male “threat to the naive”.

Or, she could have chosen to not single out a certain demographic to spread assumptions about and just railed off on the “bad men” of the world.

For your analogy to work, the school would have to be much bigger than your usual 5A school (I don’t know how you classify them there) in which a large amount of the “friends” never even really come in contact with the “cool kids”, and even the ones that do, only a small fraction try hard to suck up and join their group, or sleep with the cool kids, or whatever it is. Actually she was saying not to get in bed with foreigners, not imitate them or want to be them.

Anyway, my third point is that I doubt someone who would spend so much time and effort typing something up that long would be so lazy and not explain their meaning a little bit better. No, she referenced a black man with two girls (never explained how he was lying to them or doing anything that would suggest the two girls would have the wrong idea about him…just perpetuating a stereotype) and then went on to describe a foreigner “dying of AIDS” that admitted to sleeping with some women in the past. But what is distinctly foreign about that? AIDS is only spread in China by the foreigners? See, it’s shit like this that poke giant holes in the idea that she was simply spreading xenophobic stereotypes. Then the line about needing to make a film where the “Chinese girl rejects the foreign man” or the “Chinese man CONQUERS the foreign girl” just reeks of a vengeance-lust. Pure hypocrisy.

So the mindless drones who can’t stand the sight of a foreign male with a Chinese female get ever less annoying with each one encountered. However, to suggest what they say has some completely different and noble meaning seems a bit apologetic. Not “apologetic” in the sense that you are apologizing for what she said. The “apologetic” that originally comes from the Christians who seek to defend their faith and are, usually, excellent spin doctors. I just replaced “Christian” with “Supposedly Female Xenophobe Blogger”.

Why not? Why do you try to disabuse people from calling prejudice against Chinese “racism”? Because she doesn’t like it, that’s why.

Why the focus on for­eign men and Chi­nese girls when it’s seri­ously such a small minor­ity any­way?

Everything we rail against as “wrong” is a “minority”. What’s “small” to you is not necessarily small enough for someone else.

Why use such strong rhetoric and such a long arti­cle on the mat­ter?

Why not? Because it is important to her. Think of how much you’ve already written on the matter both here and on chinaSMACK. Why? Because it is important to you.

If he/she truly was only try­ing to point out the “bad foreigners”?

Who said that’s all she was trying to point out? No, she’s trying to disabuse naive Chinese girls of their unrealistic or overoptimistic conceptions of all things foreign so they’ll hopefully stop contributing to an unhealthy interracial dynamic of foreign worship and self-loathing. She brings a lot to bear in support of that. She tries both appealing to logic and emotion. She tries arguing how foreigners have their bad apples and tries arguing how Chinese people’s behavior may contribute to negative impressions of Chinese people amongst foreigners. Etc. etc. etc.

I sug­gest the author of that arti­cle doesn’t have the noble inten­tions that you some­how got out of it, and you say that you’re “sure” I would have enjoyed a dif­fer­ent racist/ethnocentric point a view?

Fair enough, maybe you wouldn’t have enjoyed it (though I feel confident many others would), but I’m not characterizing her intentions as noble nor are you convincing me of your interpretation of her intentions.

No, Kai. I am not online, typ­ing up nov­els about how girls need to real­ize that for­eign men are noth­ing but lies and trou­ble, and nor am I assum­ing way too much about what I think some­one was try­ing to say about something.

Wrong, I didn’t say you’re assuming way too much. In fact, I believe you’re failing to see everything she’s trying to say. You’ve latched onto one thing and are missing the forest for the trees. Remember what I said about context?

I get what you’re say­ing with the eco­nom­ics anal­ogy. How­ever, it’s a lit­tle bit off point because I’m not even men­tion­ing the read­ers’ com­ments. I’m talk­ing about the arti­cle.

For the purposes of my analogy, that distinction is irrelevant. For all you know, her article is a comment to something else. A comment to an article is a reaction to something. Her article is a reaction to something as well.

The arti­cle itself is mind­less dri­vel and says noth­ing that I haven’t heard, time and time again, ooze out of ran­dom, xeno­pho­bic, zit-covered anal cav­i­ties in per­son.

It is your prerogative to call the article names. I just personally don’t agree with you focusing on one aspect and misrepresenting it as the only thing the article was about.

This type of asi­nine com­men­tary hap­pens enough for us all to have an inti­mate three­some with the “they’re a reject in their coun­try and can’t get jobs” and “they just came to play Chi­nese girls” phrases that are broad­casted auto­mat­i­cally as if it’s part of some math­e­mat­i­cal equa­tion “(a[c]+b)=x” pro­grammed into their CPU where a=“foreigner”, b=“Chinese girl” c= “retarded assump­tions” and when you solve for “x”, it always comes out as that same igno­rant bab­bling present in that arti­cle. So yeah, I’m use to those canned remarks that are voiced over and over again.

You’re still going on calling the article names without making any real point in defense of your earlier position. Instead of evaluating the article for what parts you acknowledge, agree with, disagree with, want to refute, you’re just saying “I’ve heard all of this too much and I don’t like it”. Right, and…? You would’ve done better with “I disagree with this article”.

I did?

Yes.

Because I could have swore I was going by your sug­ges­tion that she was only point­ing out the bad for­eign­ers. If that is indeed the case, and she is actu­ally just try­ing to help girls make bet­ter choices in men, then one must remem­ber that a vast major­ity of the female pop­u­la­tion will be in rela­tion­ships with Chi­nese men. Men every­where are capa­ble of being chau­vin­is­tic or “bad”, so given the huge major­ity of Chi­nese men over For­eign men in China, it would be more pru­dent for her to focus on the much larger fac­tion of “bad” men, the locals.

You were going on about how she’s saying all foreigners are bad. I was saying, no, when you read those comments in context, you know she obviously doesn’t believe that all foreigners are bad and that she’s implicitly talking about the bad ones.

After I said this, you argued that there are more bad Chinese men than bad foreign men in China so she should bitch about bad Chinese men more. Nevermind that she actually does openly chide and acknowledge that Chinese men need to up their game, you’re advancing the argument that she shouldn’t bitch about one bad thing because there’s a bigger bad thing you feel she should bitch about. What are you going to do next? Don’t criticize American torture because there’s more Chinese torture?

Why can’t she bitch about insufferably arrogant or exploitative foreign men? When it is central to her entreaty to other Chinese women whom she feels have unrealistic or naive views of foreign men? When such naivety contributes to the egos of arrogant or exploitative foreign men? When this cycle contributes to the imbalanced racial dynamics?

She’s not really xenophobic, Jones. She’s just unhappy with the imbalance. She’s unhappy with seeing girls throw themselves at guys based upon mistaken assumptions about their foreigners automatically making them better. She’s fighting against racial prejudice, believe it or not. She’s arguing against preferential treatment for foreigners because she feels too much of it contributes to unhealthy power dynamics. She’s sick of foreigners who think they’re better than the Chinese as much as she’s sick of the Chinese thinking they’re worse than foreigners. She doesn’t advocate a blanket rejection of the foreign (xenophobia), she just advocates people being sure they know what they’re after and to be sure that the foreign guy they assume will provide that will actually do so. I didn’t say that’s noble, but I do find it pretty reasonable.

I don’t think she advanced her argument in the best way, but I do think some of you guys are misrepresenting her argument or, as I said, missing the forest for the trees. I’d agree with anyone who says she could’ve added more disclaimers, that she could’ve qualified her statements more, but I really do think reading her in context is sufficient to dispel some of this misrepresentations of her argument.

That isn’t sug­gest­ing that all Chi­nese men are “infe­rior” or any other word you want to put in my mouth.

Fine, it is suggesting that you feel she should bitch about Chinese men because there are more of them than foreign men. I still think that’s stupid.

That’s sug­gest­ing that, say, if one out of every four men are “bad”, and there are I don’t know how many hun­dreds of mil­lions of Chi­nese men in China, and I don’t know how small the cumu­la­tive for­eign male pop­u­la­tion of China is over a given year, then one can rea­son­ably deduce that the local male “threat to the naive” is much big­ger of an issue than the con­sid­er­ably smaller for­eign male “threat to the naive”.

Jones, she’s not merely fighting against any “threat to the naive”, she’s fighting specifically against naive Chinese girls who think a foreign man is their key or shortcut to some kind of happiness. She’s fighting against seeing “foreign” as an indicator of some sort of inherent superiority. She’s telling girls not to be too sure of that, to be sure that the foreign guy is actually going to give them what they’re after, with what they thought the guy’s “foreignness” would more easily provide over some Chinese guy.

Or, she could have cho­sen to not sin­gle out a cer­tain demo­graphic to spread assump­tions about and just railed off on the “bad men” of the world.

When dealing with some Chinese girls’ prejudices for for biases towards the foreign? That wouldn’t make sense. Imagine you being an Apple fanboy who thinks Apple can do no wrong, and someone wants to disabuse you of your irrational fanboyism of Apple. Would complaining about bad business practices in general be of much use compared to specifying Apple’s bad business practices?

I stand by what I said earlier, that your reaction is mostly a manifestation of “your pref­er­ence to not feel asso­ci­ated with any thing neg­a­tive.” Of course, I think that’s really normal, but it is causing you to react more strongly than I think is warranted.

For your anal­ogy to work, the school would have to be much big­ger than your usual 5A school (I don’t know how you clas­sify them there) in which a large amount of the “friends” never even really come in con­tact with the “cool kids”, and even the ones that do, only a small frac­tion try hard to suck up and join their group, or sleep with the cool kids, or what­ever it is. Actu­ally she was say­ing not to get in bed with for­eign­ers, not imi­tate them or want to be them.

No, my analogy only needs to be better than the one you offered, which you claimed would be the best I’m going to get. I think I succeeded with flying colors. I find your objections to my analogy to be silly amounting to things like “well, the populations are so different!” Jones, its the correlations of phenomenon that matter, not that absolute numbers. Her telling Chinese girls not to sleep with foreigners is just one lead-in to her larger rant, Jones. It catches attention. Don’t tell me you’re using her title as a summary for everything she said. That’s a disservice to what you read and your own intelligence.

You think that’s mindless drivel? You’re not stupid enough to think such women don’t exist. You might argue that they’re not statistically significant to you, but that’s not going to stop her from thinking it is to her.

Any­way, my third point is that I doubt some­one who would spend so much time and effort typ­ing some­thing up that long would be so lazy and not explain their mean­ing a lit­tle bit bet­ter.

Are you serious? Is this some sort of catch-all argument? “Sorry, Teach, if only this book explained its meaning a little better…” Jones, I’m not saying there can’t be more effective communications but sometimes what is effective for some is not effective for others. There’s just no single standard and you now trying to diss the article and the writer on this ground is just silly. While I too think she could’ve written better, I also think some people could’ve read more carefully, though I also think some people just can’t read. But beyond matters of intelligence and reading comprehension, I think the major reason behind people’s reaction to the piece is mostly over how they see their self-identity challenged by what she says. This is going back to being associated with anything negative. No one likes it. Foreign men are going to latch onto their connection as, well, “foreign men” and think everything she says about foreign men is direct affront to them. I can totally understand this. I just think I’ve seen far worse to not get such a rise out of this one.

No, she ref­er­enced a black man with two girls (never explained how he was lying to them or doing any­thing that would sug­gest the two girls would have the wrong idea about him…just per­pet­u­at­ing a stereo­type) and then went on to describe a for­eigner “dying of AIDS” that admit­ted to sleep­ing with some women in the past. But what is dis­tinctly for­eign about that? AIDS is only spread in China by the for­eign­ers? See, it’s shit like this that poke giant holes in the idea that she was sim­ply spread­ing xeno­pho­bic stereo­types.

Dude, the black guy with two girls story was to illustrate how even supposedly well-educated and intelligent Chinese girls throw themselves at foreigners. The significance was in where the taxi cab driver ended up taking them, that upon arriving at a top research school, he realized that those girls were normal, even smart girls, and not the prostitutes that he assumed would be the likely ones to throw themselves two to one at a foreign guy.

Now, we can say, well, why not? Why can’t two kinky girls just want to get it on? Hell, I’d even bring in the studies that show that higher education equals more perverted kinkiness in sexual behavior, but as conservative as the taxi cab driver’s expectations are (that smart girls don’t bring home guys from bars, much less tag team them), it really isn’t that strange even in modern Western societies. We (Western society) still have broad social norms/expectations that “smart” girls are less promiscuous or likely to engage in behaviors we associate with sluts and whores. This isn’t even just puritanical America but Western society overall. Promiscuity is still seen as a bad thing that the lowly rabble engage in because of poor upbringing or moral character. Don’t tell me you’re not familiar with this. You’re from the South! ;)

The story of the foreigner with AIDS as again about the girls who slept with him. This is why I say you’re missing the context. The key part of that story was the second sentence whereas you’re focused on the first sentence. The second sentence says: “An investigation had found out that all of them were high level intellectuals.” The point here, as with the above story, is her annoyance that even highly intelligent girls are giving themselves over to foreigners so easily, that a guy with AIDS could so easily bed six highly intelligent women in the span of a few weeks in Beijing.

To be sure, that story doesn’t say anything definitive except that this girls were pretty easy to get in bed. The operating assumption here is that smart girls should be more careful. While I and now you know that intelligence doesn’t necessarily affect our openness towards sex, this assumption (that smart girls should be proper and proper girls don’t just fuck so freely) really isn’t that alien to us, is it?

She uses both stories to argue how big this “Chinese girls throwing themselves at foreigners” phenomenon is, thus setting up or explaining why she’s upset about it and trying to fight it. I find it really hard to see how anyone who read the entire post could arrive at the simplistic notion that she’s “simply spreading xenophobic stereotypes.” Context, Jones, context.

Then the line about need­ing to make a film where the “Chi­nese girl rejects the for­eign man” or the “Chi­nese man CONQUERS the for­eign girl” just reeks of a vengeance-lust. Pure hypocrisy.

Jones, the “conquers” is just the word chosen in translation. Don’t attach too much weight to it. Always be careful of taking literal interpretations of translations. The key is understanding the words in their original language. chinaSMACK provides the original Chinese sources. Go take a look.

I swear I’ve already said this but the idea of less movies with foreigners with Chinese girls and more movies with Chinese guys getting foreign girls is all about trying to reverse the expectations of popular culture. There are tons of studies on this and I’m surprised they don’t even register with you when you read the line. Media and pop culture not only reflect but also influence what we perceive as possible, probable, desirable, etc.

I can’t believe you still see it as hypocrisy. It is only hypocrisy if she believes Chinese women should never be with foreigners and that’s not her position. Read my previous comments.

So the mind­less drones who can’t stand the sight of a for­eign male with a Chi­nese female get ever less annoy­ing with each one encoun­tered.

No idea what you’re saying here.

How­ever, to sug­gest what they say has some com­pletely dif­fer­ent and noble mean­ing seems a bit apolo­getic. Not “apolo­getic” in the sense that you are apol­o­giz­ing for what she said. The “apolo­getic” that orig­i­nally comes from the Chris­tians who seek to defend their faith and are, usu­ally, excel­lent spin doc­tors. I just replaced “Chris­t­ian” with “Sup­pos­edly Female Xeno­phobe Blogger”.

I actually studied Christian apologetics so I actually know what “apologetic” means. However, I think you see what I’m saying as apologetic because you haven’t considered the context I’m considering. I don’t think what I’m suggesting is completely different at all, but rather a far more accurate understanding of her article than what you’ve concluded. But what you’ve concluded doesn’t account for vast portions of her post like this:

Those hollering for the extermination of ugly foreign men are all getting worked up. Maybe, some readers reading to this point have already begun condemning those Chinese women. But slow down! I want to ask something: On the issue of what created these ugly foreign men, are you and every single one of us completely blameless?

Women who seemingly sell themselves for money can be found everywhere in the world. Americans know them as gold-diggers, with the only difference being that women like that are looked down upon in other countries, and only in China are they respected and envied. Surely this “laughs at the poor but not the prostitutes” society wasn’t made by these women?

Why would she do this if she was only set on mindless drivel spreading xenophobic stereotypes? You guys picked up on some of the things she said, but you’re misunderstanding and definitely misrepresenting her position because you’re not picking up on the other things she’s saying that are relevant and critical to truly understanding the things that stick out most to you.

Sorry, Kai. I respect you and think you’re a smart guy, but you sound like an apologist in this situation.

I understand full well what she meant in context. But you’re taking a leap when you say that she’s referring to a specific type of foreigner, or a specific type of man.

In actuality, there’s little if any language that brooks any margin for variety in what she says. She doesn’t say, “Most foreign men are incapable of giving Chinese women true love.” She doesn’t say, “Foreign men who are drunk with arrogance are incapable of giving Chinese women true love.” She says, and I’m paraphrasing, but I hope to convey the same essential point, “I doubt that foreign men can give Chinese women true love.” Not some, not most, but all.

She doesn’t say that those Chinese women who have shitty lives abroad should admit to it. She says that all Chinese women should admit that their lives suck outside of China. Again, she brooks no room for argument.

I thought my beef with her notion of Chinese directors making movies about Chinese men conquering foreign women were pretty clear. It’s hypocrisy, plain and simple.

I understand when you say that I’m taking this personally — and I am. But you need to remember that this article is extremely popular on the Chinese internet. It’s been passed around on millions of xiaonei webpages with millions of comments in support of what she says.

How many people do you think there are in China, where hearsay is the truth, will look at my wife and I and say, “Oh, I should make a reasonably formed opinion based on the circumstances of their relationship before judging.” How many people do you think there are in China, where rumor is bona fide fact, will say, “I should find out what that guy is like and what that girl is like before making any assumptions.” How many people do you think there are in China, where anecdotes are one-size-fits-all, ironclad logic, that will say, “I should ask him why he came to China and what he sees in her before jumping to any conclusions.”

I wish I could say a lot, but I’d probably be too busy chuckling before I finished the sentence.

I won’t even go into the parts about how she suddenly starts decrying government officials and other issues in Chinese society as if that’s somehow related to a discussion on foreigners.

Btw, I’ve seen Undercover Brother. The first time, I thought it was funny. The second time, I thought it was a bit offensive. That one, though, I could understand was simply tongue in cheek. Martin Lawrence, on the other hand, is just an asshole.

How am I taking a leap when I say she’s referring to a specific type of man? The whole point of reminding you of context is precisely to demonstrate that. You know she’s generalizing and you’re insisting that she’s referring to all foreign men? Come on, that’s you setting her up to be a straw man.

She says, and I’m para­phras­ing, but I hope to con­vey the same essen­tial point, “I doubt that for­eign men can give Chi­nese women true love.” Not some, not most, but all.

Context:

“But actually the fault lies with those Chinese women who go around with foreign men. But they are mostly women who haven’t been overseas, who don’t have a realistic view of the world. This is why I’m taking the opportunity to tell them how things really are. If you’ve found real love, I congratulate you. My personal feeling is that no matter how far, how long or how fleeting real love is, it’s always worth chasing.“

She doesn’t say that those Chi­nese women who have shitty lives abroad should admit to it. She says that all Chi­nese women should admit that their lives suck out­side of China. Again, she brooks no room for argument.

She brooks no room for argument only if you ignore context, which is what she writes leading up to it. Sure, you can take it out of context and say she thinks every Chinese woman’s life abroad is horrible, but if you read what she writes before, you know she’s setting up the limitations to that line.

I thought my beef with her notion of Chi­nese direc­tors mak­ing movies about Chi­nese men con­quer­ing for­eign women were pretty clear. It’s hypocrisy, plain and simple.

If you’re only going to restate your conclusion without trying to argue why I should adopt it, then we have to settle for disagreeing with each other here.

I under­stand when you say that I’m tak­ing this per­son­ally — and I am. But you need to remem­ber that this arti­cle is extremely pop­u­lar on the Chi­nese inter­net. It’s been passed around on mil­lions of xiaonei web­pages with mil­lions of com­ments in sup­port of what she says.

Sure, I don’t just remember, I know. Likewise, so are a lot of China bashing articles and posts in the West. I get it. I’m not at all surprised that people would take this personally. Just as you presumably aren’t surprised by the Chinese people who get personally offended by the tons of comments bashing Chinese people on chinaSMACK.

I understand how the homogenization of China predisposes it to certain types of ignorance and prejudice. Unfortunately, I happen to think that’s a problem with all countries and societies with similar social circumstances. It doesn’t mean I accept it, it just means I’m not surprised and thus my level of offense is not disproportionate. The reason why interracial couples fare better in San Francisco versus Shanghai is the same reason they fare better in Shanghai versus some backwater Chinese township.

I won’t even go into the parts about how she sud­denly starts decry­ing gov­ern­ment offi­cials and other issues in Chi­nese soci­ety as if that’s some­how related to a dis­cus­sion on foreigners.

You actually should because they’re the very context that limits the comments you highlight and, well, “take out of context”. Your mistake is in thinking the overall point of her post was about dissing foreign men. No, she does that to show the folly of blind worship and to criticize those who are guilty of it:

“If you’re a Chinese woman, lift up your proud head! If you’re a Chinese man, straighten your back! There is an irrefutable truth in this world, which is that if you don’t respect yourself, you can never gain the respect of others. A country, a people, are no different.”

Her discussion is not about foreign men, but about using examples of bad foreign men to temper what she feels is too much naive worship of all things foreign and lack of Chinese self-respect. Context, man, context.

Btw, I’ve seen Under­cover Brother. The first time, I thought it was funny. The sec­ond time, I thought it was a bit offen­sive. That one, though, I could under­stand was sim­ply tongue in cheek. Mar­tin Lawrence, on the other hand, is just an asshole.

Not a big fan of Martin Lawrence either. He’s more annoying than funny for me, but Martin Lawrence wasn’t in Undercover Brother. Not sure if I agree if Eddie Griffin is an asshole, but I haven’t seen that many movies with him. The point of bringing up Undercover Brother was that its a great pop culture example of how pervasive imbalanced interracial dynamics are in our society.

Man, I typed up this huge response and then the computer restarted itself. So I am just going to say one or two things.

First of all: Never, ever put me and “Apple fanboy” in the same sentence. That’s just insulting.

Second of all: We’ve all heard her first two points before. “Vast majority”, or “most” foreign men are in China because they are losers in their own country, or they’re there just to fuck Chinese girls. You also agree that there are parts of her article that should have been a bit more air-tight and specific, right? Or did I misunderstand you? I don’t really remember exactly what you said.

Regardless of what she was trying to get across, what she is doing by virtue of her lack of specification and use of exaggerated statistics (the “vast majority” thing up there), she is perpetuating a stereotype that I joke about on the internet, retroll the trolls who blurt that crap out, etc…but in real life, when someone decides to automatically mutter something derogatory about or even to my girlfriend that mirrors this shit, then that can cause some real problems. This article and others like it on the internet may or may not have a better purpose than they come across to be, but unless they take a little responsibility with their wording, they’re going to stir up more xenophobic misunderstandings. That’s the only problem I have with the article, and like I said it’s not that big of a problem (my original responses were actually arguing against you rather than the article) until it starts to actually affect me, which some of the generalizations about foreigners in there have actually done.

Oh, and third, I can’t really just leave this part out because I am proud of my algebraic equation. But yeah, that equation pretty much sums up the problem. This article fuels variable “c”. I’m terrible at mathematics, so please join me in my celebration of me having come up with that.

Maybe you’ve heard her first two points before but she’s not really writing to you, is she? Her target audience are Chinese girls. It’s just that chinaSMACK translated it for you.

Yes, I said that I would’ve written things differently if I had the same motivations as her. I’m a bit better at qualifying my statements and knowing when to surround potentially inflammatory statements with disclaimers. Mine would also likely be longer. Hah!

I totally agree with you that it was an inflammatory piece and that it is easily liable to be exploited for xenophobia, racism, prejudice, etc. But I think she anticipated it too:

Those hollering for the extermination of ugly foreign men are all getting worked up. Maybe, some readers reading to this point have already begun condemning those Chinese women. But slow down! I want to ask something: On the issue of what created these ugly foreign men, are you and every single one of us completely blameless?

So that’s why I don’t see it as one-dimensional as you have described it (mindless drivel, spreading xenophobic stereotypes, etc.). Frankly, I found it above average compared to many of the comments on chinaSMACK. Sorry, that’s just how I feel. Unlike most netizens (whether Chinese or foreign), she anticipated objections to her argument and actually bothered to acknowledge them and try heading them off, in effect at least trying to be reasonable. I think she could’ve done better (I would’ve), but too many of the foreign male reactions to her are…uh, far less sophisticated, let’s say.

Ultimately, on the overall issue itself, I posted a lot of my thoughts in my first comment here.

When I was growing up I loved asian women, baby sat by people from the Philippines, lived in the middle of “Korea Town”, down the street from “Little tokyo” which is right next to “China Town” all are surrounded by what I like to call “Old Mexico” or Los Angeles.

Growing up I had a different mind set on life then my piers of the same race. What ever they like I didn’t. I always went in the opposite direction because its the path least traveled and now I know why. Here I am this black dude that always had a Latina, Asian, on 2 occasions some Caucasians and 1 of my own under my arm. But my desire has always been an asian wife. Call it what you want to its yellow fever.

On bosses order I had to come to asia and open up 3 shops in 3 different places. Naturally I was blown away and realized my dream will soon come true.
I didn’t set out to find a wife when I relocated but I was a Chinese girl magnet. After a few spats with some bad ass bitches I realize one common fact about Chinese women in China, they will use the fuck out of any man. If I were a poor man I’d be the 1st dude jumping off buildings because this is a trap most men can’t escape in China. There are too many requirements to be in a serious relationship for Chinese women without even getting married. So I eventually married 1 after all the signs that said don’t do it. Amongst most of my married colleagues are all on the same page. Worst emtional + financial choice of our adult lives to date. As of monday I’m divorced, and happy with the terms thanks to common sense laws of China they know who paid for the house and I’m entitled to 85% of the sale of it if. She is no longer marketable with a divorce stamp in her new Green Juihen book.

But the new tactic is to find a chinese mate of equal footing in the relationship as far as emotions and finances or atleast have the aptitude to make her own way in life and not always treat me as an ATM , and that holds a passport of another country. It sucks when I have to go to Singapore or Korea and I can’t bring my lover because she’s holds a Chinese passport and getting a visa requires extensive planning. In my business, planning to travel means I need a flight in six hours.

Any one looking for some furniture let me know? Everything in the house was mine Im taking the flatscreeen and the rest is free range take what ever you want. haha?

@ B-Real: I have always had a different mindset from my piers as well. They’re all like, “hey dude, let’s remain stationary and give people convenient access to the waterfront,” but I always thought that sounded boring.

Sorry, couldn’t resist.

In all seriousness, though, I’m about to move to Beijing and might want some of your furniture. What you got?

Big Custer coming to the Bei!!!?. There goes the neighborhood now I couldn’t resist haha.
Some couches and girly chairs, diner set, you know house shit people get. Unfortunately she decided she is going to take all the shit I don’t want (she wouldn’t be able to afford furniture with out me). Sorry for leading you on.

I think maybe a Chinese mate is best suited to you, B-real. Path less travelled roughly translates into “I can’t get it together enough to have a relationship with women in my country/socioeconomic class/ age range so I will impose myself on the unwary uninitiated women from another culture that just don’t know any better or are willing to take my bullsh-t”. Chinese girl magnet?? Conceited much? God knows, no self-respecting worldly woman with options would choose a man who had so little respect (contempt even) for his former wife.
What, were you under some impression that every woman in China is just dying to be your candy? Just waiting for you to come here and “pick” her?
And what’s this about finding a Chinese mate that holds a passport from another country?? I don’t even understand this logic…must she just look Chinese? Methinks that you don’t really want an equal life partner, just some way to fulfill your fantasies. Perhaps moving back to your own home country you might find a woman that meets your, ahem, requirements. I suspect however, that you might not meet hers…
Ugh, grow up.

Agreed! I was in Xinjiang for awhile, as well as Changzhou & Tianjin in 2004…I bolted for Beijing primarily because of the expats I met there. Some of them left slime trails. Beijing has its own annoying expat problems, but not too many of the people I meet here leave me squicky.

contexts matter, so do individual attributes and qualities; idiosyncrasies reign, variations and complexities prevail, but the focus of her article is a fabric of a social pattern. It is a fabric, implying that it is not meant to be generalizable to the entire piece of cloth (at least theoretically) yet the specific ingredients are not inscrutably atypical. It is unfair to the members falling into the district of the fabric but if the limited analysis can be of some illumination to other exposed parts of the fabric. I think the attempt is worthwhile.

Quoting Josh: “why is it that a Chinese man dominating a foreign woman is glorious and a western man having relations with a Chinese woman is equivalent to Faust shaking hands with the devil?”

A partial answer is that national pride and competitiveness is often embodied in the dating and marriage distribution because gender domination is always perceived as a form of national domination which is intricately intertwined with racial hierarchies. Historically, the exploitation of women of color, unequal trade, forced labor, wartime atrocities set the colonial stage for the encounter between arrogant, overbearing, powerful, mercantile, libidinous white men (keywords: historically,colonial) and non-white, submissive, fragile, vulnerable, poor women of color. Now the world order has shifted dramatically since the departure of the Western fleets from their bases on the Asian continent, but the hereditary nobility and cultural dynamics from the colonial legacy are not going to dispel with a snap of the fingers.

I am not suggesting that we are all prisoners of the colonial past. People, esp. well-educated people with good intention and mutual respect have the potentials to make a difference. Yet we are fooling ourselves if we choose to ignore the past and dismiss our (national, racial, gender, social….) differences in our day-to-day interactions. We are remaking history gradually and slowly but we are not independent of the past.

hey Christine, thanks for your post. Now I don’t have to explain to all these white guys that they are white guys and therefore have an extreme advantage across the entirety of planet earth, which more or less sucks for the rest of us. As long as this is true, the dynamics discussed here will also exist. For some reason, it seems like the original post’s author also needs to be reminded of this.

The entirety of planet earth? Get a grip. You need to travel around, and you’ll see that these dynamics vary drastically from place to place.

As someone who has lived in the Middle East a lot, I can say that Muslim countries generally attempt to maintain control of Muslim women, and that it’s pretty damned effective. In most Muslim countries, it’s illegal for a non-Muslim man to marry a Muslim woman, and even being seen with a white man is a major taboo. Needless to say, it’s rare. Being seen with a white woman, though, that’s widely celebrated and the dream of many a man. And it’s not that rare.

In other places, it varies. In western Europe, I feel that subtle anti-Americanism can put American men at a disadvantage. Russia’s unsubtle anti-Americanism has the exact opposite result, though, oddly. In Latin America and much of Africa, both white men and women can enjoy some advantages, but remember that conservative cultures generally place more restrictions on women, so that makes it pretty hard to be with them.

That’s the way it is, and I have some ideas on why it’s that way, but draw your own conclusions.

meh. generally whose calling the shots? brown men? asian men? black men? hah. if you are oblivious to the fact that white guys rule the world I can only assume you are also a white guy… since they are the only ones who never seem to see it.

Thank you for the compliments, “cyincal lass”. Since I am tall, young, blonde, blue-eyed Anglo-Saxon American male, I assume that I am of the highest tier of white rulers. I shall use my obviously god-given advantage to demand you clean the storm gutters on my house. Sometime today, please. Thanks.

welcome to china/divide

china/divide was a group blog launched March 1, 2010 by three China bloggers: Stan Abrams, Charles Custer, and Kai Pan. Less than three months later, on May 21st, china/divide was blocked by China’s “Great Firewall”, becoming inaccessible to readers in China without proxies or VPNs. Nearly five months later and after a total of 132 published posts, china/divide was quietly disbanded, except for an occasional post or two by Kai when a comment on another site just won’t do.

C. Custer is, paradoxically, a man of few words but also a man who just will not stop writing about China. He is in a loving open relationship with his first China blog, ChinaGeeks, and also does freelance writing and translating about China. In his free time, he enjoys inscrutability and video games.